Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Holes in My Head

The clones just keep on comin'.

Although I have purchased a myriad of OSR supplements and modules, I have only ever purchased two retro-clone core books:

1. OSRIC, economy edition. Elven bucks for all the info of the PHB, DMG, MM, and Fiend Folio (yeah, I like the Folio... suck it) without the yellowed pages and old pot smell of second-hand original books. The real bonus here is that OSRIC is much better organized (well, except for the monsters.) When I ran AD&D, I found that eventually all I needed on the table was OSRIC.

2. Mutant Future- I loves me some Gamma World, but I'm not a huge fan of the old rules. Mutant Future gives me all the gonzo mutant goodness of Gamma World with a rule set that I much prefer and am far more comfortable with. Oh, and it made for some easy (and bitchin') D&D crossover.

I hate to say it, but I really have no use for print copies of Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and that whole gang... I have the original red and blue books, a near complete set of orange spine AD&D 1st ed books, and the mighty Cyclopedia. From where I sit, the differences between the clones are mostly trade dress and a few house rules.

To end on a bright note: many of the clones are free on PDF, which is how I found out that I wanted print copies of OSRIC and MuFu.

3 comments:

Interesting. We have considered plunking down the $$ for OSRIC, but have held off until now because it seemed that Labyrinth Lord was the way to go, especially since it is set-up to be compatible with Mutant Future and the various alternate revisions (Advanced Edition/Original Edition) of the basic rules. We never did much with the old red or blue box stuff back in the day. We still have all our OD&D booklets and kind of just slid over into AD&D one book at a time as the first edition was released.

Hard to argue with you on those points. I know I see a lot of the same stuff over and over in each edition, but sometimes there is enough of a change or something to catch my interest. The hardest thing for me was to chose one. Even though they were all very close there were still enough differences that you needed to decide on one. I still have my AD&D books that I bought when I was in junior high and those are the books I go to if I have a question.